One thing that is hard for new brewers to get their head around, I know, I'm one too, is that when dealing with simple sugars, (cider, honey, fruit juice, refined sugar), all yeasts are dry yeasts. So it doesn't matter whether you use ale, wine, champagne, cider or mead yeast they'll all continue eating sugar until the alcohol level kills them. For Ale yeast that's around 10-14% abv, wine/champagne can go to 18-20% abv.
There are a couple ways you can stop them before they've eaten all the sugars.
- Racking to a secondary and adding sulfate/sorbate will kill the yeast.
- Racking to a secondary, cold crashing in the refrigerator for several days, then racking again to separate out most of the viable yeast. This method is not 100% reliable because it can leave some yeast behind.
You can also wait till the yeasts have fermented dry and then backsweeten after using one of the above methods to eliminate the yeast.
None of the above will allow you to bottle condition since the yeast is no longer viable.
It is possible to make sweet bottle carbonated cider/mead/wine though.
- backsweetening with an unfermentable sugar such as lactose.
- Bottle before fermentation is complete, monitor carbonation of the bottles closely then pasteurize the bottles to kill the yeast. Some have luck with this method, but it's tricky.
- Bottle before fermentation is complete, monitor carbonation of the bottles closely then when carbonation is near the level you want, quickly refrigerate all the bottles and keep cold until you drink them. Again tricky because cold doesn't kill yeast, just slows them down/causes them to go inactive.
I haven't tried the last two on that list, but from what I understand they can be dangerous and require you to check carbonation levels at least daily. Pasteurizing the bottles can itself cause bottle bombs from the heating process.
You can do a non-carbed sweet cider/mead/wine by overwhelming the yeast with sugar so they die off before eating it all, this requires 3+ lbs of sugar equivalent per gallon and because of the high abv usually needs a few months of aging before it's drinkable.
Hope that helps, I'm sure someone more knowledgeable than I will chime in and correct me if I'm wrong.